


Make a Wolf out of You

by Wolf_of_Lilacs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Gen, Loosely Inspired by Ringing Bell, Other, Sheep Harry, Wolfdog Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 10:38:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18658750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs
Summary: "Now he may as well be the king of the wolves, for he is far more dangerous than any wolf could ever be."Harry, a lamb orphaned after the brutal murder of his parents, must learn to defeat his enemy.





	Make a Wolf out of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [exarite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exarite/gifts).



> Thanks to Essa for the brilliant, adorable prompt.
> 
> And thanks to RedHorse for betaing.❤

On a happy little farm in a happy little valley, there lived a happy little lamb. He was loved by his parents and by all his flock, and even by one of the barn cats. He spent his days cavorting about the pasture, not a worry to disturb his peaceful play.

But the world was far wider than the farm, and there were unfriendly things in it. Little Harry—for that was the name he had been given—would come to learn this, far too soon.

It was a warm late summer night when it happened. The flock had all gone to sleep, Harry lying comfortably nestled near where his parents stood. He dreamed of more peaceful days, and yet even he felt something like dread.

Not far from the farm, a wolf lived alone in a mountain cave. His name was never spoken, except by very brave souls. He hunted at night, but not merely for food. For sport, some thought, for he did not always devour his prey. And tonight, he decided, was a hunting night.

The wolf crept from his cave, his white fur making him ghostlike in the light of the thin crescent moon. He nosed his way through a gap in the fence and found the field where the flock slept in ignorance, their scent wafting, tantalizing, causing his mouth to water.

The wolf had no trouble in picking. There had not been many lambs born that spring. He padded on near-silent paws past the sleeping rams and ewes, his eyes fixed upon Harry.

Lily, Harry's mother, was a light sleeper. Her head came up at the wolf's approach, and she let out a frantic baaing. "No use," he growled, and sprang.

He attacked Harry's father first, still only half-awake and not quick enough to fend him off. And when James fell, futile bleating his only last words, Voldemort turned to Harry.

"Kill me instead," Lily snapped, kicking him to draw his attention back to her.

"How could I deny you?" he wheezed. She'd broken one of his ribs with the force of her kick, and he let loose a growl deep from his chest in his fury and pain.

Voldemort latched his teeth about Lily's throat and bit deep. His mouth filled with her blood. "Mama, no!" But Harry could do nothing, and when Lily fell limply to the ground. Voldemort turned from her corpse, catching Harry a quick blow to the forehead with a paw, then fled back the way he had come.

Blood dripped into Harry's eyes, and he blinked it away. the rest of the flock had awakened and were surrounding the corpses, jockeying for the best positions with baas and jabs of horns. "I want to see!" "I'm so glad it wasn't me. Poor Harry. “Do you think he'll be back?" "Seemed like she gave him quite a kick there."

Anger disturbed Harry's numb shock. "Would you stop?" he snapped.

They all gave him pitying looks. "Poor thing," old Figg repeated.

Harry did not sleep the rest of the night. Why was he still alive? His mom had saved him and was dead herself… He was all alone.

"Harry!" Hermione, his barn cat friend, nuzzled against him. "You're alive!" Her purr rumbled in her chest. “I’m sorry…” She trailed off.

"Yeah," Harry muttered. They sat cuddled together for the rest of the night.

*

The rest of the flock seemed to forget James and Lily almost immediately. They went back to grazing and inane chatter within a day. When they spoke to Harry, it was with the same pity, but nothing they said ever served to comfort him.

Who was the wolf that had killed them? Harry yearned to know. The scratch on his forehead had begun to scar, deep as it was.

Some of the flock shied away from him when they saw it. "It's an evil mark," they would mutter. "He'll come back for you."

"But who is _he_?" Harry spat at their retreating backs. "Why won't anyone tell me?"

Old Figg took him aside one day, nudging him out of earshot of the rest of the flock. "His name is V—Voldemort, now," she whispered, trembling. "He was born here, just a pup like any other pup with a perfectly decent name, but there was something different about him."

"But he's a wolf!" Harry protested.

"Hmm. Yes, but they were hoping for a savage dog, like his mother. He took after his wolf papa, though, and ran away." She shuddered at the thought. "Now he may as well be the king of the wolves, for he is far more dangerous than any wolf could ever be."

Harry gazed over the fence. The hole Voldemort had entered through was patched. The mountain's peak was a shadow in the distance. The world yawned wide, and he wondered…

"He's out there somewhere, and he'll find a way back in, won't he?"

Old Figg nodded. "I'm sure he will."

Harry didn't really like the rest of the flock, especially since his parents' deaths. But there were other lambs—even ones yet to be born—and he didn't want them to be without their parents the way he was. "I'm going to go and find him," Harry decided. "I want to be able to protect other sheep from him." _And he could teach me_ , he would have said, but Figg was shaking her head, her eyes wide.

"He'll devour you in a heartbeat. Don't go out there!"

When he told Hermione about his idea, she was equally discouraging. "It's harsh beyond the fence," she said, stretching out on a bale of hay and cleaning her paws. "Not meant for lambs or kittens."

"Have you ever been?" Harry protested.

"No," she admitted. "My mother said it's better to watch, and that there are enough mice in the barn. But maybe one day." She scratched an ear with a back paw. "When I've learned enough to survive out there."

Harry sighed and went off to plan his escape.

The largest hole in the fence may have been fixed, but there were plenty of smaller gaps just big enough for Harry to fit through. Harry studied each of them. He wanted to get as close to the mountain as he could. And the gap to serve him best was one, smaller than the others, very near to the hole Voldemort had used. It would have to do.

Harry took a few deep breaths to steel himself, then squeezed his way out. He lost a few clumps of wool in the process, but now, he was free.

He wandered for a while. They had all been right. It was big outside the fence. There were rocks that tripped him up. There were trees taller than any he had ever seen. And the mountain was much farther away than he had thought; it had seemed so close before.

He stumbled along. His feet ached. He stopped to nibble at bits of tough grass, but it was nothing like grazing at home.

And then, hours and hours after he had made it through the fence, Harry made it to the base of the mountain. It yawned above him, rocky and impossible to climb. But Harry had no use for the impossible, and began to climb anyway.

One step. Then another. His legs shook with the effort

Another step. Another step.

He wanted to lie down and enjoy the warmth of another’s wool.

“What is this?” A shadow loomed out from behind a rock. Harry tripped with a bleat, staring up and up and up into the wolf’s scarlet eyes. Up close, he was…

Enormous.

“I want to learn to be a wolf like you,” Harry said. If Voldemort wasn’t really a wolf, Harry reasoned, then anyone could learn.

The wolf (wolfdog) twitched a pointed ear, regarding him. “And why would you want to learn that, little one?”

Did he recognize him? Harry couldn’t tell. Surely not. If he did, Harry would be dead by now. But the wolf merely watched him, swishing his long, heavy tail across the ground behind him, stirring up dust. “My parents are dead. I want to avenge them.” The lie came easily, even though his voice shook.

“You are nothing but a lamb. Lambs cannot be wolves.” Voldemort rose to his paws.

“I’ll be the first, then,” Harry told him.

Voldemort snorted. “I doubt it. But I do enjoy watching others’ pain, so let’s see how long you can keep up, hmm?” He padded up the slope to an opening between two boulders. Harry scrambled after him.

The cave was small, just large enough for a nest of scrap cloth and shed fur. Harry looked around, his nose wrinkling at the scent of dog. “You’ll have to get used to that, at the very least,” Voldemort sniffed, almost offended. He squeezed past Harry, a bone between his teeth that he took outside to bury.

Their first night together was terrifying. There were howls outside from the wolves that went long and late. Harry shivered, tried to ignore the sounds. Voldemort stuck his head out at one point and let out a horrific, thunderous howl that silenced them. It was not like their howls at all, and Harry had no doubts as to the tales’ truth. This was no wolf.

“Where should we begin?” Voldemort mused in the morning, stretching and yawning hugely. “I need to hunt, but you have no need of hunting, do you?”

“I should learn anyway,” Harry decided. He had to know everything.

“Right. If you scare off the prey…” Voldemort bared his teeth in threat.

Harry nodded. “I won’t.”

Voldemort found a rabbit rather quickly. Harry watched as he crept up on it, his large paws impossibly silent. The rabbit had no idea he was there, as it nibbled on a seed. When he sprang, it had no time to scream, and Harry was grateful.

“Teach me to fight,” Harry pleaded after Voldemort had finished, licking the bloodstains from his white fur.

“What will you fight with, little one? You are too young for horns.”

“I have hooves,” Harry muttered, raising one.

“Still too small to hurt a flea. Very well.” And so their first lessons began. Harry learned to jump and to kick. He had no claws, but he managed to land a blow within the first couple weeks, surprising them both.

The lay at night in Voldemort’s cave and talked of little. When Harry asked how Voldemort had come to be a wolf, Voldemort would redirect the conversation to past exploits: the time he gored a fox, the time he made the pack his, the time he met an old owl that tried to give him advice “which I roundly ignored. I haven’t time for wisdom.”

It was rather nice, Harry thought. He could forget the farm, could forget what he had left behind and get caught up in the unfamiliarity.

And so time passed, and Harry grew.

He learned to kick in ways no sheep ever had, like an animal with claws might. He learned to use his fledgling horns the way a bull might.

He learned to stalk prey, though he never felt inclined to eat it.

Voldemort could not have been more intrigued (maybe even pleased?) at Harry’s progress. “This is entertaining,” he would say as they ate their evening meal (whatever small prey they’d caught for Voldemort, grass for Harry).

It was peaceful, really. The wolves never bothered them, frightened of Voldemort as they were.

“Why did you leave the farm?” Harry finally dared ask, after months and months had passed and he was nearly grown.

“I wanted the world,” Voldemort replied without rancor. “The farm was too small for me.” He peered out of their cave, down the slope. Sometimes he prowled higher and higher up, nearly to the peak. He could gaze out over the wide expanse of trees and farmland from there. He looked so regal, with his massive head tilted upward and his fur fluffing to twice its size. He had the world, Harry supposed.

But all peaceful things must wane.

“It’s time,” Voldemort announced one evening.

“Time for what?” 

“A proper hunt.” Voldemort padded purposefully past Harry and down the slope.

Oh. Oh, no. Harry had known, hadn’t he? That this day would come. But he had forgotten. Forgotten why he was here. Forgotten…

Harry hurried after him. He remembered this path from seasons ago; it was much easier to traverse now with his longer legs and surer steps. He couldn’t match Voldemort for speed, but he was never far behind.

Voldemort waited for him, his scarlet eyes glinting. “I confess that I have been curious what would follow once I brought you back,” he murmured. “Do not disappoint me.” He pressed his nose to the scar on Harry’s forehead, and it was too much, _too close_ , and he had never done the like before.

(He had always known, then, that Harry was the lamb he could not kill.)

They didn’t recognize Harry as Voldemort nosed his way through the old gap, perhaps once patched, now just as wide as ever. There were bleats in the fold, the voices of lambs Harry had never met.

He had done all this to save them. Tasted the blood of animals it turned his stomach to consider eating. He had spent seasons with the murderer of his parents. This was his moment.

“Prove your worth, Harry,” Voldemort snarled, seeing Harry’s hesitation. Voldemort leapt, and Harry leapt, too.

Not at the ewe that stood in front of a lamb, but at Voldemort.

It was easy to catch him a blow to the shoulder with his horns, easy to unbalance him, easy to send him reeling with a kick to the chest and another jab of horns. Voldemort tried to lift a heavy paw to push Harry back, but Harry’s position was such that he couldn’t get a proper angle. He thrust his horns forward, feeling the break of bones and the spurt of blood and…

“Not a disappointment,” Voldemort wheezed, blood pooling around him. His eyes sparked with impotent rage, his breaths came in short bursts. “I’ve made a wolf of a sheep, Harry.”

Harry did not look away as Voldemort twitched feebly, then went still.

“You saved us,” someone said behind him, causing him to jump, shaking the blood from the points of his horns. It was the ewe. He thought he may have recognized her as one of the lambs he had once played with. “Thank you, whoever you are.”

He dipped his head.

“Harry?” Hermione, now sleek and long-legged, padded across the blood-soaked grass. “You survived!” She purred at the sight of him, but there was something in the slight prickling of her fur…

He looked at Voldemort’s body, spread out in the grass, his white fur stained with dust and blood. He looked at the other sheep, all of them gazing at him with awe, but there was something in their eyes…

Harry turned away and pushed his way through the gap. He made his way to the cave, so empty without Voldemort, he thought with an unexpected pang. No more would there be tales of past exploits. No more memories shared.

He could protect them out here, without having to face their fear.


End file.
